Dividing walls
by disco biscuit
Summary: A conversation between toilet stalls helps Ginny decide what she wants.


Ginny slammed the cubicle door shut and sat on the closed toilet seat, heart pounding crazily and vision blurring. She gave a loud sniff and balled her fists against her eyelids. Don't cry. _Don't cry_.

It had been horrible. The worst thing was, he'd been so apologetic - as if he thought being harsher would have been far worse an ordeal. It was a testament to how little boys knew. The nicer they were during a break-up, the more they made you want to scream with rage. The more likely you were to cry.

Ginny ripped a few thin papers of tissue from the dispenser and blotted her face fiercely. Not her. She could get through this. She wasn't going to let a stupid prat like Harry Potter get the better of her. After all, Harry hadn't been perfect, thought Ginny fiercely. He'd started talking about Quidditch five minutes after they'd lost their virginity, a time her Teen Witch novels dictated should be for sharing feelings, snuggling and falling asleep in each others' arms. Outside of the bedroom, he was often so caught up with Ron and Hermione and saving wizardkind from Voldemort she felt he totally forgot she existed. And (she was beginning to struggle) the way he twitched his glasses up his nose - _so_ irritating. Ginny tried very herd to concentrate on these things, and block out anything else.

But she couldn't. Whenever she thought she'd just about mastered this fresh, new hate for Harry, a nice memory of him touching her hair or smiling at her for no reason popped up and she had to make a grab for the tissues.

In the next cubicle, somebody cleared their throat.

"Er…are you ok?" the voice sounded hesitant, a little bored. Inquiring out of duty, not interest.

Ginny, an extra layer of pink added to her face through embarrassment, mumbled yes, and that all boys were bastards.

"I really can't imagine any boy could justify the racket you're making." The voice perked up, as if it encountered twenty crying girls a day and Ginny's were the only tears of interest.

"No, he really doesn't," Ginny replied gamely.

The voice laughed. It was a throaty, enjoyably filthy kind of chuckle, and Ginny immediately warmed to its owner.

"So tell me," the girl said "what's he done to get you practically flooding the place?"

"Oh, you know," Ginny said "usual stuff. He had too much on his mind already, studying for the exams and worrying about…stuff." She had almost said _about Voldemort trying to kill him_, but that would have let her anonymity slip and she was rather enjoying it for now. "He didn't think it was fair on me. Caring to the last, my ex-boyfriend."

The laugh again. "Don't you just hate that? Why can't he be a man about it and continue to treat you like crap?"

"At least I'd still be getting regular sex." Ginny couldn't believe her frankness. Perhaps this was how Catholics confessed to murders in their confessional boxes.

The girl's laughter deepened. "A woman can always do a man's job, if she needs to."

Quite.

The occupants of the cubicles sat in companionable silence, both now leaning against the wall that separated them. Ginny watched the graffiti moving on her door. It was drawn with Zonko's Marvellous Movie Motion ink that brought the primitive line drawings to life - right now, Ron's caricature was in the middle of a sexually charged Slytherin Quiddich team scrum under the immortal caption "Weasley is our king." Gryffindor was obviously still proud of last year's victory.

"So what about you? Got a boyfriend you want to complain about?" Ginny asked.

An amused sigh through the wall. "Yes and yes. You're better off without one really. I love him, but sometimes…it's too much. I feel smothered."

"How so?" asked Ginny, whose fierce independence had always prevented her from becoming any boy's possession.

"Like…I'm just infatuated. I don't really feel like myself when we're together, more like I'm a part of him. But it's either this or nothing at all. I can't bear to be away from him, and to be with him I need to be there all the time. That's the way our relationship works…no line of separation."

"I bet he enjoys that," said Ginny, shrewdly.

"Oh, totally. Thinks he's king of the fucking world. I know it looks like I just follow him all the time, but he'd miss me if I was gone. And not just because it inflates his ego…he can be really sweet sometimes, if we're alone. That's when the barriers come down."

"I don't think mine had any barriers. He was always nice, just a bit clueless. Never knew what I was thinking, and said stupid things without realising it. He thought talking about Quidditch after sex was perfectly appropriate."

A snort of laughter ricocheted inside the other cubicle. "Mine too! Though," she added as an afterthought "he probably knows what he's doing and just trying to annoy me. Show me how impersonal and dull this all is, how it doesn't affect him when I _know_ it does."

Any trace of amusement in the voice had been replaced with anger.

"That sounds frustrating." Ginny said, sympathetically. She was glad she wasn't in the other girl's shoes, glad that Harry hadn't ever really known her well enough to know how to hurt her.

"It is. He does it to all the girls, though. I really shouldn't be affected."

"What? Have you compared notes with his exes or something?"

"No - the other girls he sleeps with as well as me."

She said this so calmly Ginny didn't quite know how to reply.

"You're shocked." The laughter was back in the voice again. "Don't be - I don't mind. We have an open relationship, we both know he likes sex too much to have it with just one girl."

"And what about you?"

"Well," she said confidentially "I quite like to keep myself just for him. But that's my choice."

"I suppose it is" said Ginny. If both of them were happy with the arrangement, then it wasn't her place to judge. But she still did. Suddenly, she wanted very much to find Harry and be wrapped in his dependable arms.

"Have you _ever_ slept with anyone else?" Ginny asked, after a pause she realised the other girl wasn't going to fill.

"No. I don't want to. I've found the man I'm going to marry…he'll settle down eventually."

Ginny very much doubted this, if her guess as to who they were talking about was correct.

"Have you?" asked the girl.

"Have I what?"

"Ever slept with anyone else?"

Ginny felt herself squirm uncomfortably. None that Harry would ever know of, she thought. It had only been one time, anyway, and hadn't been anything special. But Neville had been so grateful Ginny had felt rather embarrassed.

"No" Ginny said, half truthfully. There hadn't been any actual _sleeping_. She'd found him almost in tears over some Potions homework. The library was deserted and she'd been going out with Harry three months and was beginning to tire of the routine - Harry snatching some time when they could sit and talk about nice things, the nice sex they occasionally had, the long, un-nice times when he couldn't be there. Maybe she was just being like every other selfish, bored fifteen year old. Wanting more, wanting to dare herself to choose something wickeder. Longbottom was a good candidate. He wouldn't blab if she told him not to.

Three minutes later, with Neville collapsed and spent on top of her, tears of pleasure now in his eyes, she'd realised how overwhelming guilt could be.

From then on, Ginny had been the model girlfriend. It had taken shagging Neville to realise how lucky she was to have Harry. Ginny wrote in her Potions textbook "You only need to be bad once to realise all the good things you can fuck up" and left it there, hoping to impart some wisdom to whoever had it next year. In this new, soft focussed lens of thinking, she realised she'd known it wasn't Harrry's fault if he couldn't be with her much, and really, talking about Quidditch all the time was rather endearing. It was what made Harry _Harry_. In fact, she'd rather enjoyed being Harry's girlfriend, until his sudden attack of conscience.

Without quite knowing why, Ginny had to blow her nose again.

She thought of the girl in the next cubicle, and how they were so different, and the type of relationship they both strived for. The identity of her companion was easy to guess - who else's boyfriend was such an arrogant fuck? Once, she hadn't been too different from him. She'd used Neville in the same way as he used those girls. Perhaps, like her, he'd realise the mistake he was making. Perhaps, hopefully, the other girl would realise her own mistake in loving him. But Ginny doubted it of both of them. And she knew what she wanted to do.

"I have to go. It's been nice talking with you, Pansy," she said with sincerity.

"You too, Ginny," came the reply.

So they'd both known.

Ginny left the bathroom with light feet, floating towards the Gryffindor common room. Later that evening, she and Harry would have a long conversation, and compromises would be made, and soft words would be exchanged. Even later than that, in the early morning, Ginny would leave her own bed and slip into Harry's. He would touch her as gently as he used to, and afterwards only murmur "I love you." But Ginny didn't know this yet. She was still only walking on air.

Pansy waited until the other girl's footsteps had died away. Then she unlocked the cubicle door and went to a mirror, slashed on some lipstick. Carefully tugged at her hair. Draco was waiting for her at the Astronomy Tower, and she wanted to look her best.


End file.
